


Brood Parasite

by SlippinMickeys



Series: The X-Files: Season 12 [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, MSR, Post-Canon, Season/Series 12, motw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 10:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20794802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: As Mulder and Scully settle into their new lives and jobs, the paranormal comes to them—in more ways than one.





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

> This is Episode Two. To start at the beginning, read [Episode One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700824/chapters/49172258) first!

COLD OPEN

The moon was bright as it filtered down through the trees, lending the backyard the pallor of an old silent movie, grey and black with the hint of the sun lost through a silver lens.  
  
He listened again for what brought him out here—a sudden cacophony from the chicken coop that ran along the side of the pole barn. It was silent now, having regained its usual nighttime stillness, heightened only by the gentle susurrus of sleeping fowl.  
  
He scanned the edge of the trees once more, seeing no movement, and headed forward toward the coop, his grip tightening on the walnut handle of his grandfather’s old rifle.  
  
Approaching the small paddock, he knelt down on creaking knees and looked inside, sweeping a flashlight over the copper feathered bodies of sleeping, peaceful chickens. Nothing seemed amiss.  
  
When he stood, he thought he heard the sound of something whooshing above his head, but chalked it up to the pounding blood-rush of low blood pressure and quick ascent. It wasn’t until he turned back to the house that he heard it again—the sharp sound of the air being cut by something large.

It was only out of the corner of his eye that he spotted movement by the side of the coop abutting the very end of the pole barn, perhaps a trick of the effulgent moon on his eye’s periphery. Nevertheless, he pulled up short and raised his rifle a tick.  
  
He took slow steps toward the corner of the barn, the moonlight lost at the building’s edge like the inky dark space in between stars. If there were something there, he’d have trouble seeing it.  
  
He was five feet away when he heard what sounded like the gnashing of a terrier’s teeth after a rat—the sharp click of incisors biting down once, hard. He whipped his rifle all the way up and cocked it back.  
  
Steeling himself, he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and willing his heart rate to drop. He eked himself, gun-first, around the edge of the building.  
  
With a sharp flutter of motion and an unholy yowl, something came at him, right at his face, and he saw only the color black and perhaps the blinking flash of a tooth as he slammed his eyes closed hard and fell back with a sharp yell.  
  
His rear hit the ground hard, knocking his teeth together, and braced as he was for the impact of his attacker, he was clenched for nothing. He opened his eyes slowly to the nothingness of an empty night, the scream of whatever it was still ringing in his ears. Not feathers nor fur, nor movement of any kind. Whatever it was had vanished so quickly he began to question whether he’d really seen anything at all.  
  
He slunk back into his house feeling embarrassed and afraid, latching the lock he never used on the door and propping the old rifle next to it.  
  
“Everything all right, honey?” his wife Sarah asked, walking into the room, looking at him in concern, her hands twisting a faded yellow kitchen towel into a tight linen line. “I thought I heard you yell.”

He said nothing, but went for a rarely used cupboard, pulling down a dusty bottle of amber whiskey and taking a quick slug direct from the bottle.  
  
He coughed once, unused to the burn, and connected eyes with his worried spouse.  
“I don’t know,” he said.

**TITLE SEQUENCE**

She’d almost forgotten what it was like, pregnancy. It was everything-is-a-little-off. A little bloated, a little off-balance, a little nauseous. A lot tired. Always. Constantly—not a moment for 40 straight weeks she didn’t feel different from her usual self. How it became her new normal. That little ever-growing bundle of cells a tiny maestro orchestrating the symphony of her body and tuning everything a little off-pitch.  
  
She sat down heavily on the old, soft sofa in their unremarkable house, putting her feet up on the coffee table and closing her eyes. From the kitchen, she heard the gentle murmur of NPR from the small radio perched above the sink. They’d taken to leaving it on for Daggoo, who was still asleep upstairs, one paw pushed into Mulder’s calf.

It was a Sunday, a day they had lately used for sleeping in since starting their new jobs, but hip pain had kept Scully awake most of the night and she’d headed downstairs at first light, hoping to let Mulder continue to slumber. 

There was birdsong in the air outside — the aviary migrants of the neighborhood recently returned from winter habitats. She knew if she opened their door the air would be rich with sound and smell, pungent with the verdant olfaction of tilled earth and warm sun. 

A creak broke on the stairs behind her and she turned. 

Mulder padded down the stairs with a stiff yawn, absently scratching his chest. They connected eyes.

“Everything all right?” he asked, his voice still sleep-choked and rumbly. 

Scully smiled at him and hummed an affirmative and he plopped down heavily next her. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked lightly. Scully shook her head. “Brain or body?”

“Body,” Scully said, rubbing a hand over her abdomen and Mulder winced in sympathy. 

“Coffee?” he asked her, and on her nod, he stood and shuffled off to the kitchen, busying himself with casual domesticity.

She looked at him then, really looked, her hand still resting on the soft swell of his child. He had the same galumphing grace, the same intellective mien, the slightly squinted eyes. Grey hair growing in at his temples, the lines in his forehead permanent now. The same goodness that always spurned him on is there with excess in reserve. He is different, though. Where once there was a manic push to know, to seek, to uncover, now there is only a peaceful, abiding patience. He’ll steer them – all three of them—calmly and true through their days.

She feels lucky to be here.

“Breakfast?” Mulder inquired, pulling her out of her reverie. 

“We don’t have any food,” she said to him, as he stood in the open doorway of the fridge, the single bright bulb in it illuminating shelves one could almost describe as ‘chock-full.’ He threw her a skeptical look but wisely kept his mouth shut. 

“We don’t have any food _ I want to eat _,” she clarified, letting a petulant edge into her voice and feeling thoroughly justified in its timbre. 

“Then let’s go shopping,” he said cheerfully, swinging the fridge closed with a kick. 

“Have I told you lately that I love you?” she said, suddenly turning to a puddle of mush.

“Yes,” he said, making his way toward her, cat-like and predatory, “but say it again.”

  
XxXxXxXxXxX  
  
SHOP AND SAVE GROCERY MART

FARRS CORNER, VIRGINIA 

He got a prickly feeling on the back of his neck in produce. It was with him through the bakery section and on into the deli. He finally turned on his heel, and gave the store a slow scan. Scully paused at his elbow, looking at him in concern.

“Everything all right?” 

He saw the usual shoppers. A mom pushing a toddler in the cart, an old woman browsing the bread selection, a young college-aged kid carrying a 12-pack of beer. 

“Yeah, I just… it’s nothing. What’s next on the list?”

“Cereal.”

“Onward, ho,” Mulder said, walking again, heading for aisle five.

“Mr. Mulder!” 

Mulder heard a friendly voice coming from the pasta and rice aisle, and slowed his steps. Scully eased their cart to a stop next to him, her eyebrows arched in intrigue.

Peter Keaton, their neighbor a few acres down the road emerged from the aisle, depositing several boxes of dry goods into a hand basket as he walked.  
  
“Mr. Keaton,” Mulder said with a smile, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.  
  
Peter Keaton was the friendliest of the sparsely populated area Mulder had come to think of as his ‘neighborhood’ and he and his wife had taken to leaving homegrown vegetables and fresh eggs by Mulder’s front door a couple of times a month for the last several years. Mulder did his best to reciprocate by waving and being generally friendlier than he normally would have been, having no easily shareable skill set with other neighbors who raised poultry and vegetables, or had F150s with a snowplow (he’d come home more than once in the winter to find some kind soul had plowed his long, georgic driveway).  
  
“You remember Dana?” Mulder nodded toward Scully, who smiled at the man.  
  
“Of course!” Keaton said happily, mooning at Scully and thrusting out a hand, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you around here again, Dr. Scully.”  
  
Scully blushed but pumped his hand in polite enthusiasm.  
  
“I see you’re stocking up,” Keaton said, nodding toward the two egg cartons in their cart, “I feel bad I haven’t been able to send any your way lately,” he went on, a wave of hurt washing over his face.  
  
“Everything all right?” Mulder asked.  
  
“Well,” said Keaton, doffing his cap and scratching his head, puzzled, “we’ve been losing chickens lately. Damndest thing. Four alone in the last week.”  
  
“Is that unusual out here in Farr’s Corner?” Scully asked innocently.  
  
“Not these last few years,” Keaton said, “we’ve got a pretty nice set-up. Used to have all kinds of trouble with fox,” Mulder heard Scully mumble something under her breath next to him, but Keaton didn’t hear and plowed on, “but we tightened everything up, raised fences, dug in further and haven’t had a problem until recently. It’s genuinely bizarre. I mean, no signs of escape or predators – just… vanishing chickens.”  
  
“Huh,” Mulder said, a city-boy born and bred, not really sure what, if any, advice to offer.  
  
“That’s actually why I grabbed you,” Keaton said, “I thought maybe… Well, you’ve mentioned a few times that you’ve investigated weird things now and again,” Mulder chanced a look at Scully and saw her eyebrows go up, “and this is the strangest thing. I was wondering if maybe you might take a look around, see if you come up with anything I might be missing?”  
  
Mulder saw his chance to repay the kindness of Peter Keaton and his other neighbors and smiled at the man.  
  
“I’d be happy to, Mr. Keaton.”  
  
XxXxXxXxXxX

They tipped themselves out of the Explorer and onto the thick gravel of the Keaton’s driveway. Their neighbors must have heard their car doors, as the Keatons filed out of the house with smiles and waves of welcome. 

After the compulsory handshakes and hugs, Mulder got right down to business.  
  
“Why don’t you show me to the coop,” he said to Keaton, and they all trooped around the side of the house and out into the back.  
  
The yard was sprawling; Keaton had acreage and he wasn’t afraid to use it.  
  
The chicken coop was large, with two separate enclosures – a large one that meandered around and through a large garden, which Mulder assumed was the daytime pasture, and a smaller one that abutted the large rectangular pole barn which seemed to be the nighttime roost.  
  
“Over here,” Keaton said, hooking a thumb toward the barn, “we lost another one last night.”

Mulder pulled on the fencing, jiggling it, testing it for weakness, but it didn’t move much and seemed to be in good repair.  
  
“I sunk this three feet down so nothing could dig under it,” Keaton said, “I just don’t see any way something’s getting in there. Or getting out.”

The chicken wire brought to mind the claustrophobia of the Russian gulag, and he flashed on the black oil, the weak vaccine, running at Krycek with a shiv. He had to shake off the cobwebs of memory. Scully was looking at him, concerned, from the porch, in discussion with Peter’s wife Sarah. A nod and a quirked up grin from him and she turned back to her conversation.

Her face had rounded in the last few weeks, as had her midsection. She looked radiant; lush and fertile. He felt a swell of male pride at her condition. He missed all this the last time; the subtle changes, the gradual swell. He awoke from the dead to a fully gravid Scully, lumbering and ready to pop.

“So what do you think?” Keaton asked, bringing him back to himself.

“You said you’ve found no signs of predation?”

“Not even a stray feather.”

“Footprints of any kind?”

“Just ours.”

Mulder pondered this. 

“Show him the thing!” Sarah called to them from the porch. She had Scully’s hand in her own, patting it in a matronly way. Scully didn’t look uncomfortable. He swung his eyes to Keaton.

“It’s in here,” he said grimly, heading into the pole barn itself. Mulder followed him.

It was clean, but was redolent of the sharp tang of bird shit and dusty straw. It was dark, light filtering in through grates spaced out among the eaves and it took Mulder’s eyes a minute to adjust. 

Keaton had his back to him, and when he turned, he had something in his hands. 

“Found this in the coop this morning when we were collecting eggs.”

He set it gently in Mulder’s waiting hands.

It was heavier than it looked like it would be, oblong, about the shape and length of an eggplant. Its skin had a leathery feel and a little give, it had the look and color of old brick stippled with flecks of ashy black. 

“What the hell is it?” Mulder asked, flashing his eyes to Keaton.

Keaton shrugged and Mulder turned on his heel, blinking his way into the sun outside for a better look. 

He stood for a minute in the light, moving the object gently back and forth in his hands.

Sarah and Scully had stepped off the back porch and moved to join him. He heard Keaton close the barn door and approach from his left. 

“Where exactly did you find it?” Mulder asked the air in front of him, not taking his eyes off of it. 

“In one of the nests,” Sarah volunteered softly from his right, “it was just sitting there next to two eggs this morning.”

It had an otherworldly feel to it, Mulder thought, as if wasn’t in the right place or time. 

“Do you mind if I take it with me?”

“Not in the least,” Keaton said, like he couldn’t wait for it to be out of his sight. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

“Tell me that’s not an egg,” Mulder said later, the object in question sitting innocently on the small table in their kitchen. 

Scully looked at it a moment and then at Mulder.

“...Your mind is telling you it’s an egg because it was found in a nest—a chicken nest, by the way. The power of suggestion,” she finally said, without much conviction.

“And, you know, the shape, apparent composition…” Mulder ran out of steam after only listing two things.

Scully lifted it up and turned it over in her hands. Something about it struck her as false and malevolent. She set it back down.

“There are plenty of bird species that lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, letting the host birds do the work of raising their young.” Mulder went on.

“Speaking of composition then, Mulder,” Scully said to him, “what the hell kind of bird lays an egg like this?”

“I admit it looks more reptilian to me than bird,” Mulder said, thoughtfully.

In all her years in school and hospitals, federal buildings and classrooms, Mulder was still the most sagacious person she knew. He was right far more often than he was wrong, and aside from his intellect, had a keen wit and talent for getting right to the heart of something. It turned some people off, but she had always been attracted to it like a magnet to steel. In his eye, their respective intelligence was equiponderate, different but balanced; it’s what made them work so well together. But she knew, deep down, that his instincts were more sharply honed than hers and his willingness to follow them more staid. She hoped their child inherited this from him, above all else.

“What if…” he went on after a moment.

He shot her a look and she knew he was about to unload a whopper. She raised an eyebrow so he’d get it over with.  
  
“What if it’s some kind of pterosaur?”  
  
“Mulder.”  
  
“Scully.”  
  
“ _ Mulder _ .”  
  
“I’m not saying it _ is _ a pterosaur, but maybe some other kind of creature previously thought extinct.”  
  
“Mulder, the odds of that—“  
  
“Never tell me the odds,” he interrupted her, smiling. He knew she hated when he quoted _ Star Wars _ at her.  
  
She huffed a sigh, but couldn’t help but smile back. “Tell me you’re spitballing here.”

“Scully, they discover previously thought extinct species all the time.”

“All the time?” She looked at him skeptically.

“Often enough,” he replied, “not only that, but they’re getting closer every day to bringing back any number of _ actually _ extinct species, which you have to admit, is pretty cool.”

Scully shot him a look. “Mulder, don’t tell me you’re a proponent of bringing extinct species back to life.”  
  
“You’re not?!”  
  
“Mulder! Not to even get into the ethics of it, the scientific hurdles you’d have to jump are Everest-sized.”  
  
“There’s a scientist at Harvard Medical School who thinks they’re two years out from mapping the Woolly Mammoth genome.”  
  
“I don’t suppose he’s the one doing the sequencing?”  
  
“He is, in fact.”  
  
That actually startled Scully and made her argumentative momentum trip up a bit.  
  
“The ethics of it…” she went on, with a little less dint, “Mulder, these are animals that had their chance, and nature selected them to fail.”  
  
“You’re seriously quoting a fictitious scientist from _ Jurassic Park _ at me?”  
  
“A fictitious scientist with a really good point.”  
  
“Scully, you know as well as I do that it’s likely humans caused the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, which negates your argument, and in fact highlights the fact that if we have the power to bring them back, we should.”  
  
“The environmental impact of doing so—“  
  
Mulder interrupted her. “Scully are you familiar with Pleistocene Park in northern Siberia?”  
  
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me…” He hadn’t gone on an explanation bent in a really long time. She’d never admit (to him) that she enjoyed them, and he’d earned this one.

“In the last 10,000 years in Siberia, the landscape has undergone a moderate change from vast grassland to gradual forestation. With temperatures around the world going up, these forested areas, unlike the previous grassland, trap the heat, causing the permafrost beneath it to melt. The release of the amount of carbon dioxide and methane trapped in frozen permafrost across the world would lead to a further catastrophic increase in global warming.”

Scully waited for him to go on, trying not to smile.

“Two Russian scientists fenced off a 16 square kilometer portion of the wooded tundra in Siberia and released animals that used to be common on that landscape in the ice age, including bison, moose, reindeer and musk ox – and that area very quickly turned from wooded to grassland and the temperature of the permafrost there went down.  
  
“Their plan is to release wooly mammoths and other resurrected megafauna to repopulate the Siberian plains, in hopes of not just saving the species, but the planet itself.”  
  
She leveled a look at him.  
  
“All right,” she said on a sigh, “I have a biologist friend at the University of Maryland. I’ll call her and see if we can’t take this egg thing to her on Tuesday.”  
  
“So you’re admitting it’s an egg?”  
  
“I never said that…”  
  
Mulder smiled at her and reached out to grab her hand.  
  
“Any reason we can’t go tomorrow?” he asked.  
  
“We have our 18 week ultrasound tomorrow, remember?”  
  
Mulder’s entire face lit up and she was glad she’d released the reins and given him his head.  
  
This was how she liked her Mulder.


	2. Act Two

It was mid-morning and they sat in the waiting area of her OB’s office, one of two couples who sat huddled together in the silent room. A large bubble burped up through the water cooler in the corner and four sets of eyes shifted toward it.

“I can’t believe you brought that thing,” Scully said quietly, nodding toward the egg (for lack of a better word) in Mulder’s lap.

Mulder just raised his eyebrows at her and shot her a secret smile. The leg closest to her was bouncing in nervous anticipation. She put a hand on his knee, stilling it. 

A nurse came out of a side door and glanced around the room expectantly. 

“Dana?”

Mulder rose, tucking the egg into his jacket pocket and reached down a hand to help her up, the smile never leaving his face.

They were led back into a large room, through a privacy curtain pulled halfway across the threshold, and the nurse settled Scully into the large reclining examination table, which was surrounded by three mid-sized television screens.

“You get the ‘Nats game on these things?” Mulder asked.

“Just that one,” the nurse said good naturedly, nodding toward the screen directly to his right. 

“Really?” Mulder asked, surprised.

“No,” the nurse replied, sharing a small smile and a look with Scully commiserating the long-suffering position of the imperturbable spouse.

“You can sit there,” she said to Mulder, nodding toward the chair to Scully’s left. She then picked up Scully’s file and made a few notations. 

“Can you confirm your birth date?”

Scully did so and the nurse flipped a page. 

“Any previous pregnancies?” 

“One.” 

“Carried to term?” The nurse looked to Mulder, who nodded silently. 

“Looks like you’re due late October?” 

Scully nodded and the nurse flipped the folder closed and turned for the door, pulling the privacy curtain closed behind her on her way out. 

“The technician should be in in a few minutes,” she said as she left. 

Once the door closed behind her, Mulder turned to her and squeezed her hand. 

“You okay?”

She squeezed his hand back with a small smile.

“Good… Do you, uh, know how to use one of these things?” he asked her then, pointing to the ultrasound machine.

“... Yes…” Scully answered, drawing the word out and narrowing her eyes in trepidation. 

“Great,” Mulder said, rising quickly and reaching into his jacket for the egg, “turn it on, would ya?”

“Mulder,” she said, her scolding tone indicating she’d do no such thing. 

“Please?”

It was hard to deny him and he knew it. She looked at him levelly for a long moment. She had to admit her curiosity was piqued.

“Fine,” she said on a huff, moving quickly, standing and getting behind the ultrasound machine’s controls, taking a moment to orient herself.

Mulder placed the egg gently on the bed that Scully had just vacated, a look of excitement taking over his features.

Scully booted up the machine and it beeped several times, then the screens in front of them came to life.

“Okay, I think it’s ready,” Scully said, holding the wand toward him. 

“Can you do it?” he said, spreading his hands wide, “I’ve only seen it on TV.”

Scully huffed again and leaned over the table, appraising the best place to start.

“Hand me the gel,” she said, pointing to the bottle at Mulder’s left elbow, and he hopped-to. 

“We have two minutes and that’s it,” she said, as she spread a small amount on the object and met his eyes. “I’m not going to be one of those people billed for messing with the equipment.”

Mulder nodded, not taking his eyes off the egg.

An image sprung to life on the screens above them. 

“All right, what are we looking at?” Mulder said, and even to her trained eye, Scully could make out nothing.

She rolled the wand this way and that, wondering if the ultrasound was even penetrating the shell of whatever this thing was. Then, what appeared to be almost a straight line appeared on the screen. Scully paused. 

“Is that,” Mulder started, “is that a bone?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Scully said distractedly, though something in the back of her mind pinged, and she leaned closer to the screen, her eyes narrowing. 

For a split second, she could make out what was nearly unmistakably the small leg bones of a creature before the wand moved fractionally and she lost it. 

“Wait!” Mulder said, excitedly.

“I saw it, too,” she said, moving the wand in, trying to recapture the fleeting image. 

A few millimeters back and forth and it appeared back on the screen. She stopped moving the wand instantly, and Mulder leaned in close to the monitor. 

Years of professional skepticism had her distrust hackles raised instantly, but she admitted in that moment, if only to herself, that it looked a hell of a lot like bone on the screen in front of her. 

They leaned in together, appraising, when the ‘bone’ moved. Fractionally, but it had moved and she wouldn’t deny it. Both she and Mulder jumped back from the screen in astonishment and turned to look at each other. 

The next moment happened quickly. They heard the door to the room snick open and Scully leapt into action, wiping the gel off the wand and replacing it as Mulder whipped the egg up and into his pocket. Scully jumped back up onto the examination table where the egg had just been. She landed just as the privacy curtain was snapped open revealing a smiling technician. 

“Good morning!” The young woman said cheerfully.

Mulder returned her felicitations as casually as you please, even as Scully’s heart hammered to bursting in her chest. 

“Oh,” the young woman said, sitting down with a smile, “it looks like I left the unit on. Don’t tell anyone, okay?” she said with friendly confidentiality.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Mulder said, reaching for Scully’s hand and giving it a squeeze.

XxXxXxXxXxX

She used to worry that she loved him more than he loved her; that she would always come in second to Samantha. It kept her distant at times, and wary. Even after they’d slept together, she worried. He’d said once, not long after their first sexual encounter, that he wouldn’t mind if everyone knew, wouldn’t mind if everyone thought she was his, but she never quite unclenched until William was born. The breathless, wonder-filled way he looked at his son changed her mind, changed her outlook, changed her. Mulder had more than enough love to go around, and the knowledge of that knocked her back. It stole her breath. All these years later, he still found ways to surprise her. 

The exam had gone well, so far. They found the heartbeat right away, and everything looked great. Scully was finally regaining her equilibrium after their clandestine examination and she had to pull her attention from the screen when the technician said something she didn’t pick up.

“I’m sorry?” She asked, looking toward the young woman. 

“Would you like to know the sex?” The technician asked again cheerfully.

They hadn’t discussed it—it somehow felt like a jinx—but before she could open her mouth, Mulder answered for her. 

“Yes!” he said, “this time… I want to know everything.”

XxXxXxXxXxX 

He was fit to bursting, she could tell. His thumbs were drumming on the steering wheel, the leg not using the pedals tense and bouncing in the driver’s seat. She wished she knew if he were excited about the ultrasound on the egg, or the baby. 

Once they were on the highway to Farr’s Corner he finally turned to her. 

“A girl, Scully!” He was practically goofy, his smile infectious. She grinned at him. 

“I’m excited, too,” she finally said.

“A girl!” he said yet again, drumming the steering wheel for emphasis. 

Scully could only smile. She wanted to enjoy this moment. Hold onto it and file it away next to her heart. 

“She’s going to look just like you,” he said. 

“Mulder—“ She didn’t want to get ahead of herself, knew all the things that could still go wrong.

“Red hair and blue eyes, wait and see,” he said, sure of himself, his optimism and glee filling the car, pushing her doubts and fears out of the cabin and into the early summer air. 

“What about red hair and hazel eyes?” she said, getting into the spirit of it. 

“Ugh,” Mulder said sweetly, thunking his head against the headrest behind him. “She can have anything she wants. A pony...? What color? A car...? Manual or automatic?”

“Please don’t spoil her,” Scully said off-handedly. 

“She should learn to drive a manual, just in case,” Mulder said, more to himself. “I’ll teach her.” Then, after a moment, “Samantha was born with red hair and hazel eyes. Hair started coming in brown when she was about nine months old. The red never came back. Broke Mom’s heart,” he said, reaching into his pocket with the hand not on the wheel.

“But not her budget,” Scully said with humor, “SPF 95 ain’t cheap.”

He was still smiling. Still in the moment with her. There was a time when she would have lost him to the memory of his sister, but those days had passed without her noticing, had drifted past as he had grown.

Mulder shot her a grin before his face turned into a grimace. Before Scully could ask what was wrong, he blanched. 

“Ugh!” He said, whipping his hand out of his pocket and holding it out with disgust. “My pocket is filled with ultrasound goo!” 

Scully didn’t stop laughing for a full three minutes. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

“I don’t think Daggoo likes it,” Scully said, after the dog had taken a dubious sniff at the egg and backed away with a whine.

The thing was odd and mysterious and it gave off a vibe like a prophecy. As a student of the mysterious and a friend to the odd, to Mulder that made it wonderful.

“I don’t like it, either,” she added, giving him a meaningful look.

If he could, Mulder would sleep with it under his pillow – he didn’t want to let it out of his sight. But he knew what Scully was trying to tell him. The thing gave her the creeps.

“That thing gives me the creeps,” she said.

He grinned to himself and looked at it on the kitchen table – their default keeping place.

“We’ll leave it down here tonight,” he said. “What time is our appointment with your friend at Maryland tomorrow?”

“Ten,” she said, reaching down to give Daggoo a reassuring scratch behind the ear. The dog sighed and leaned into her hand. 

“I’m sure we’ll need to leave it with her for at least a few days,” he said, “18 hours and it’s out of this house.”


	3. Act Three

In the end, having the thing in their house made Scully so uncomfortable that she ended up putting a cooking pot over the top of it before she went up for bed, not having been able to convince Mulder to keep it on the porch. Mulder watched her do it, but didn’t say anything, amused.

As they headed upstairs, the tendrils of malice emanating from the egg loosened their grip with each step.

They both had classes to teach the next day, hers in the early afternoon, and his in the late. They agreed to take two cars up to the Maryland campus and then on to Quantico. Once they had that settled, Scully drifted off to the bathroom to begin her evening ablutions. Mulder lay back on his pillow, absently stroking Daggoo’s head and considered where his life had ended up.

Fifty-six years old with a baby on the way. He had been staring at the door of 40 the last time he found out he had fathered a child; scared and confused and unsure of his place in the world. The adage ‘youth is wasted on the young’ had a certain mouthfeel on this side of the hill, but age had bestowed on him confidence and composure; it had blessed him with a grace he wasn’t entirely sure he’d earned. He’d need it all to raise a daughter in the world. This current one in particular.

Scully emerged from the bathroom like gold from a mine, a bright chip of color released from the darkness. She looked fresh-faced and clean, and smiled at him as if she had a secret to tell. 

He wondered how many times it was possible to fall in love with the same person. 

She slipped under the covers and turned to face him, her eyes bright. 

Mulder reached out and trailed a finger slowly down her nose, her lips, neck, between her breasts and finally stopped over the soft swell of her stomach. 

“I made this,” he said, quiet and earnest. 

“A girl,” Scully said, her tone matching his. 

He shook his head, a feeling like wonder settling on him. He knew without asking that Scully felt it, too. 

She leaned toward him and pressed her lips to his, soft and warm. He reached for her and marveled as he always did at how small she was—larger than life Scully, filled with acres of knowledge, passion, will, and all of it somehow contained in a vessel he could lift with two hands. 

She shifted herself on top of him, and he dragged his lips down her jaw and neck to where her pulse thrummed in double time. He grabbed her backside with purpose, pulled her against him.

“Is this okay?” he whispered roughly into her neck.

Her only answer was a foggy “Mmm,” and her hands fumbled lightly at the waist of his pajamas, his skin burning a cool trail of goosebumps wherever she touched.

Vaguely he heard Daggoo jump off the bed with the light tinkling of dog tags and the clack of claws on hardwood.

He was pulled wholly back into the moment when Scully grabbed him along his length and gave him a slow, languorous pull from root to tip. 

He thought no more.

XxXxXxXxXxX 

He came awake with an abrupt sniff of awareness. The air was foggy with the leftover smell of sex, goose down, the mild musk of dog. Scully remained asleep next to him, a soft purling snore emanating from her in counterpoint to the adrenaline blast of his own heart thundering in his chest. For a moment he thought it had only been a bad dream, but the low, nervous growl of Daggoo from near his thigh roused him from sleep completely. He put a calming hand to the dog’s neck, his body tense as a panzer, hackles raised. 

Mulder stilled, listening for whatever it was that had awakened him. 

And then; a thump from overhead, followed by the clacking of enamel on shingles, a skittering of sinister intent from above. 

Instinct drove him to the bedside table where he’d historically left his service weapon, but he swiped at nothing but a glass of water, which fell to the floor in a wet clattering burst. He had disassembled and cleaned the gun after shooting Edmund Peacock, and it was still downstairs in his office. He swore under his breath.

He moved to the floor next to the bed in a crouch, the spilled water drenching the knee of his pajama bottoms. Daggoo hopped down after him, keeping close, his tail between his legs and the low growl in his throat renewed with every breath. 

Silence for a moment and then the skittering sound again, moving from the center of the roof toward the edge, just above where their bedroom window hung below the dormer. 

The sky was cloudless and the moon was two days past full—it shone uneasily and dull through the tempered glass. Mulder was certain he saw a shadow tilt momentarily in its frame before hearing a single sharp _ scrape _followed by a pregnant silence. 

Daggoo whined once in the stillness, he and the dog looking at each other. And then, from downstairs, an unholy crash followed by the tinkling of scattering glass. Scully sat bolt upright in bed.

“Wassat?” she said, fumbling in the dark.

Mulder held up a calming hand to her from beside the bed, but there followed from downstairs the loud crash of metal on hardwood—the cooking pot atop the egg knocked to the floor. 

They both jumped up as Daggoo set off at a tear down the stairs, his sharp barking a Doppler effect of cacophony as he descended. 

“Daggoo!” Scully shouted, leaping after him, but Mulder grabbed her arm.

“Let me,” he said, leaving no room for argument as he pushed past her and down the stairs, two at a time. 

As he rounded the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the kitchen his eyes took in the chaos of the room, and, for a split second he saw the last foot of a leathery tail sliding through the broken kitchen window above the sink. He stood for a moment, stunned, then took off, barefoot and barely clothed through the front door and out into the night. 

The air was silent and still, the only disturbance was Scully coming out the door behind him and snapping on the porch light. 

He stood in the dewy grass, dazed and thrumming with adrenaline.

“Who was it?” she asked him from the doorway, pulling the tie closed on her robe, worry etching lines in her brow.

“It’s not a ‘who,’ Scully,” he said, “it’s a ‘what.’ And I don’t know.”

He caught her eye and they both then scanned the yard, the air, the horizon. There was nothing. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

“Take Daggoo upstairs, would you?” Mulder said, slipping on a pair of mud-crusted running shoes that he’d left outside the door a week ago. “There’s glass all over the floor.”

Scully nodded once and scooped up the dog, who wiggled in her arms all the way upstairs, not wanting to be contained. He gave one sharp irritated bark as Scully closed the bedroom door on him. 

When she got back downstairs, Mulder was standing with his hands on his hips, staring at the upturned kitchen table. The egg was gone. 

“Careful,” he said over his shoulder.

She looked around and grabbed a pair of loafers and went to the linen closet to get the broom.

Mulder righted the table and she swept around under it, sure to get every nook and cranny. They worked in silence cleaning the kitchen, he wearing rubber gloves and cleaning the area around the sink, the air punctuated by the tinkling of glass as she swept and the occasional disgruntled bark from Daggoo upstairs.

“So much for NPR,” Mulder said, holding up the dripping radio by its cord—it had been knocked into the left half of the sink where they’d had dinner dishes soaking in soapy water.

Mulder peeled off the gloves and tossed them in the trash.

“I’m going to check the breaker outside and grab some plywood to cover the window,” he said, moving to the door.

“Careful out there, Mulder,” she said uneasily. 

She watched him through the broken window. Her eyes followed him—still as lithe and hale as the day she met him—make his way across the yard and to the small shed out back. 

She’d awoken on a scare, her entire body tilting and out of balance. She wouldn’t feel quite level until he was back inside, until she could touch him again, feel the warmth in his hands lift her up and right her. 

He came to the window a minute later with a large piece of plywood under one arm, a hammer in one hand and a mouth full of nails. He smiled at her around them, looking ghastly.

She gave him a wave and leaned back as he hoisted up the wooden plank from the outside, covering the window, and instantly the house regained a stillness and warmth. A few minutes of pounding and he was back, filling the doorway, the fresh smell of night clinging to his clothes.

“Come here, Scully,” he said, his voice low, “I need to show you something.”

She followed him out and around the side of the house. The house needed landscaping – always had—the few feet in front of it an eyesore-ish runway of plain dirt with the occasional weed. They hadn’t had rain in over two weeks which had rendered the dirt soft and dusty—it blew up and through the kitchen window when they left it open. Scully had been meaning to do something about it for weeks.

Mulder shined his flashlight in the patch just to the left of where he’d been working. It was faint, hard to discern, (Scully had to squat down to see it) but there in front of them was a large, bird-like footprint, with extremely elongated toes, pointed at the tips with what must be sharp claws and the faint outline of webbing in between them. Her stomach dropped.

“It’s too fragile for a melage casting,” Mulder said quietly, “but I think I can get a decent photograph.”

A breeze blew in behind them then, swirling little eddies of dust.

“You’d better make it quick,” she answered.

XxXxXxXxXxX

She sat nursing a cup of decaf, shell shocked and tired after two nights of little sleep and a world-tilting middle-of-the-night commotion. Scully missed the ritualistic morning zip of caffeine, but a hot drink was a hot drink and she’d take whatever pep-lending fortitude she could get. 

The picture Mulder had taken of the footprint sat in front of them in the watery morning light, printed out on their office HP, grainy and not of this world. They’d gotten pictures as best they could with the help of a few flashlights and a lamp and extension cord before a light sprinkling of rain sent them dashing inside.

Mulder blew over the top of his own mug (also decaf, in grudging solidarity) and squinted at the photo.

“It’s not great.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Scully said, with an eye to lifting spirits. She knew Mulder was crushed about the loss of the egg, and she felt an odd sense of responsibility for its loss even though she knew it had nothing to do with her. “You know, a bird in the hand?”

“That’s not even funny,” he said, though he smiled. “Think it’s worth taking this to Maryland instead?”

“It can’t hurt,” she said and rose from the table, planting a kiss on the crown of Mulder’s head. “I’m sure Lindsey can work with whatever we bring her. I’m going to hop in the shower.”

She had a class to prepare for, and wanted to wash the dust and stress of the last six hours away.

She got in the shower, let the needles of hot water prick her skin and contemplated the change that had washed over Mulder in the last 48 hours. It was purposeful, the look of a dog with a bone, provoked and resolved. A look she knew well, and she tried not to let unease overtake her. 

Mulder was on the hunt.

XxXxXxXxXxX 

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

COLLEGE PARK

“Where in the hell did you find _ this _?” asked Dr. Lindsey Cox, an old undergrad friend of Scully’s. She was examining the photo with a good old fashioned magnifying glass. They’d included a ruler in the picture for scale, and looking at it in daylight was jarring, even to them.

“In our lawn, if you’d believe it,” Scully said, and from the look on Lindsey’s face, she didn’t. 

Lindsey’s office was adjacent to a Biology lab in one of the older buildings on campus, dusty and crammed with books and papers on nearly every surface. 

“Excuse the mess,” she said, when Mulder leaned against a countertop, sending a cascade of folders to the floor. “My lab is pristine, but I need the chaos in here to think.”

She waved him away when he bent down to pick up the mess. 

“Leave it,” she said. “Do you happen to have the digital version?”

Mulder handed over a thumb drive. She moved over to her computer set up and inserted it.

Mulder had taken the picture on his good Nikon, and the photo was definitely better on the screen.

“Wow,” said Lindsey.

“Can you tell what it is?” Scully asked.

“I can tell you what it isn’t,” Lindsey said, taking off her glasses and turning to them. “I’ve never seen anything remotely like it.”

“Do you know anyone in the Paleontology Department?” Mulder asked, hedging.

She shot Scully a look. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“It’s really not, Lin,” Scully said, and then explained about their neighbors, the egg they found, the way they lost it. What Mulder had seen. “You know the kind of work we used to do. This is… Like that.”

Lindsey pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I believe you,” she said, “but I’m not sure Paleo will. They’re going to give me all kinds of shit.”

“Take Chuck Burks with you,” Mulder said, “he’s used to it.”

“The imaging guy?” Lindsey said.

“Do you know him?” Scully asked.

“I’ve seen him on campus. I can’t say we’ve met.”

“Well, he’ll at least attest that the image in front of you hasn’t been altered,” Mulder said, “that and he’s into this kind of stuff. He’ll back you up.”

She looked skeptical, but promised to follow up.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Three days had passed without incident. Mulder had followed up with Peter Keaton the day they’d gone to College Park—nothing like what had happened to Mulder and Scully had ever happened to them, but he’d promised to let them know if anything out of the ordinary went on.

He called Mulder early on Saturday morning, his voice amped up.

“It happened again, Mr. Mulder,” he said, he sounded out of breath, “we lost two chickens last night. Two! We’ve never lost two at a time before!”

“Is the egg back?” Mulder asked, getting amped himself.

“No, sir, nothing like that.” Mulder’s heart sank. “Do you want to swing by by any chance?”

“I do, actually,” Mulder said, hoping he’d be able to spot something he hadn’t noticed before.

“You’re welcome any time this morning.”

“How about now?”

“Now is perfect.”

Scully was still asleep – the first time in nearly a week that she’d slept through the night and on into the morning, so Mulder called Daggoo out and into the Explorer, hoping to let her sleep as late as possible.

He rolled down the Keaton’s driveway, Daggoo with his nose plastered to the passenger side window, his butt wiggling wildly. They hadn’t been on an adventure in a while.

Mulder climbed out to greet Keaton, leaving the dog in the car until the other man said, while shaking his hand, “let the little bugger out, he’ll be fine.” Daggoo leapt out and greeted both Keatons with a flattering level of enthusiasm.

“Same as before,” Keaton told him, as they walked around to the back yard, “nothing but two missing chickens.”

Mulder walked the same circuit he’d walked nearly a week before, checking the fencing, walking the perimeter of the barn. Daggoo cast ahead of him, sniffing absolutely everything with a wagging tail.

When they were in the back of the barn, the dog paused, sniffing hard. His tail stopped wagging and he looked up at Mulder.

“What is it, boy?”

The dog sat.

Mulder cast about him looking around for whatever it was that Daggoo had picked up on. He finally glanced up and noticed large scratches along the eaves of the barn.

“Mr. Keaton?” Mulder called out.

Keaton came around the edge of the barn with a questioning look.

“Have those been there or are they new?”

Keaton looked up at the marks.

“I can’t say I’ve seen them before. But then, I haven’t really looked.”

“Do you have a ladder?” Mulder asked him.

Ten minutes later, Mulder was perched on the top of a 15 foot ladder, examining the marks with Peter Keaton below, holding it steady.

Mulder held up a hand to them. There was a vague hand-shaped pattern to them, but nothing concrete. He flashed to the claw marks on a door in East Los Angeles, the camera crew following them, how Scully was even more reticent to indulge his more outlandish theories on camera. He smiled at the memory.

He looked up and under the eaves at the overhang and noticed that one of the ventilation grates was directly over where most of the scratches were. The grate was a lot bigger than it looked from the ground or in the barn – big enough to easily accommodate even a human.

“Peter,” Mulder called down. The man looked up. “These ventilation grates—do they open up?”

“They shouldn’t,” Keaton called back.

Mulder pushed on it experimentally.

It gave easily. He pushed again, one side swung right up, as if it were on a hinge.

“This one does,” Mulder said.

He found similar scratch marks inside of the pole barn in the darkened corner near the eaves, and Mulder found that if he just touched the grate, it would slam back down in place.

He’d found where, whatever it was, had gotten into the barn. 

Keaton agreed to let Mulder stake out the barn that night to see what he could see and that was how he found himself, fourteen hours later, sitting in a folding chair in the corner of the darkened barn, armed with a thermos of (blessedly caffeinated) coffee, a couple of protein bars, his Nikon and Keaton’s rifle.


	4. Act Four

Scully didn’t love the idea of Mulder being out there by himself, but the Keatons had promised they’d check in on him and anyway, he was armed and sitting inside of a locked building, what was the worst that could happen? Scully had brought up several scenarios, not amused, but Mulder had silenced her with a kiss to the forehead and an “it’ll be fine!”

Hours had passed without incident, aside from Peter Keaton popping his head in to check-in at about midnight. Despite the caffeine, Mulder found himself nodding off in his chair. He looked at his watch.

_ 3:43am _

He stood to stretch—fifty-something bodies not made to sit in folding chairs for more than a reasonable amount of time—and had resolved to head home in twenty minutes if nothing had happened, when he thought he heard something outside of the barn--the call of an animal, perhaps.

He stilled, waiting to hear it again, when about a minute later he heard the unmistakable scratches of something outside of the loose roof grate.

He reached quietly down for his Nikon, proof of whatever it was being his first priority. He turned on the camera and raised it up, standing in absolute silence, not even daring to breathe.

The grate flipped open and he heard the chickens becoming restless in their enclosure.

There was hardly any light in the barn, but he could tell something was lowering itself into the space and he waited a moment, willing himself to get the perfect shot, before he depressed the button on the camera, hoping against hope he’d gotten it.

The camera clicked without fanfare, and Mulder realized that he’d forgotten to ensure that the flash was on. He held back a string of profanity and lowered the camera, trying to find the right button in the darkness. The rustle of his clothes was all it took for the interloping creature to realize something was amiss, and just as he found the button for the flash, there was a scrambling and the grate slammed closed with a crash. He had swung up the camera in time to get a picture of the thing closing on thin air. 

This time he let the profanity lace heartily into the air and he ran for the door of the barn, knocking over the chair and spilling the thermos of coffee in the process. 

He burst out into the night and saw what he thought was movement in the trees to his left and he took after it. A squawking yowl filled the air, lifting up the hairs on the back of his neck as he gave chase.

The moon was not bright, but gave off enough light to see the movement of something large in the trees above him. It was making for the canopy.

He vaguely knew the terrain of the area, thinking that the trees probably thinned out to the northwest into a grassy area that was considered wetlands when they got a lot of rain, which they hadn’t in a while. He’d taken Daggoo on a long walk out there a few weeks back and found the area drained into a fairly impressive river that must at some point become a tributary of the Potomac. The creature broke through the canopy overhead and was headed northwest. Mulder thanked whatever was looking out for him and followed at as close to breakneck speed as was possible through the forest.

He broke out of the treeline not far ahead, and as he suspected, the area was grassy and much easier to navigate. He looked up and saw what he thought was a long, dark wing cresting on a gust of wind and headed for the treeline opposite the open plain. He followed as best he could.

He ran the length of the grassy field, occasionally losing his footing in the darkness or stepping in a wet, sucking patch of mud, but he got to the treeline himself and finally stopped, hands to his knees, listening as he caught his breath.

He was met with an eerie quiet. Even the normal nighttime sounds of the forest were silent.

He took a few steps forward and listened again. Ahead and to the right, he thought he heard the sound of running water. So he’d found the river. He made his way toward it, hoping to reestablish a map of the area in his mind.

He glanced at his watch. It was nearing sunrise and the sky was taking on a dusky quality, making his surroundings a little easier to see.

As he approached a small ria, he suddenly got the feeling of being watched. He turned slowly, letting the camera, which he’d been holding as he ran, fall limply on its neck strap and raised the rifle as he did so.

Something told him to look up.

He raised his gaze and there in the first rays of dawn he saw nothing but a sharp set of ungues coming right at his face. He raised his arm to block the blow and was knocked back hard, the mass of the attacking creature frighteningly large.

And then it was all the close-quarters struggle of nail and tooth and Mulder just trying to keep the thing away from his neck. With a wrenching yank and an unholy yowl, the creature slashed at Mulder’s forearm and then was gone.

The pain came on a second later as Mulder tried to stand and he looked down to see blood gushing down his arm and running sickeningly into the leaf-carpeted ground below. It sounded like rain. He still had the rifle in his other hand.

He turned, looking for his attacker, and he finally saw it clearly. It was, for lack of a known name, a pterosaur. Its feet were clutching the bark of a tree twenty feet overhead and across the river, its long beak clacked once while it stared directly at Mulder, gnashing a mouth full of scarily large incisors. From its shoulders up and to the large crest over its head were small, brightly colored feathers, but the lower half of its body and wings were a mottled hide of leathery maroon. Mulder would think it beautiful if not for the fact that it spread its wings and pulled its head back, readying another strike.

He raised his weapon, trying to steady his shooting arm with his injured one, which screamed in pain. Darkness closed in around his vision and he felt himself leaning unsteadily to the right just as the thing kicked off from the tree and came right at him.

He squeezed the trigger three times before falling to his knees. The creature faltered in midair, its body knocked to one side by the impact of at least one bullet, and the last thing Mulder saw before he blacked out was the splash of water as the creature hit the river and was pulled swiftly downstream.

XxXxXxXxXxX

He came to slowly, the air he was breathing moist and foul-smelling. As he regained more awareness, he realized there was something licking his nose. He opened his eyes: Daggoo.

He tried sitting up, but was woozy, and his head thunked back into the carpet of leaves below him. Daggoo gave a sharp bark.

The sun was blazing, it had to be at least midday. He could hear people calling his name in the distance. He tried calling out himself, but didn’t have the energy. Daggoo let out two more sharp barks and he heard someone breaking through the brush nearby.

“Mulder?” It was Scully. “Jesus, Mulder!”

She was at his side in seconds, her face a mask of concern.

“Peter!” she called out loudly, “I need the first aid kit! 

He willed his eyes to open and she crumpled in relief, ran a hand affectionately down his face and jaw.

“God, Mulder, what happened?”

“It was a pterosaur, Scully,” he said weakly.

There was more crashing through the brush nearby and then Peter and Sarah Keaton both fell to their knees beside him.

“Oh my God!” Sarah said.

“I think he’s lost a lot of blood,” Scully said to Peter, who handed over a red first aid kit from a backpack. 

“It was a dinosaur, Scully,” he said again, his voice skill weak.

“I’ll say,” Peter said to Scully, his face showing his worry plain.

“Let me get him bandaged up,” Scully said, “we need to get him to a hospital.”

“I got an ATV,” Peter said, standing, holding the backpack out to Sarah. “I’ll go get it.”

He took off at a run and Mulder let his head fall to the side to watch him. When he’d disappeared into the woods, Mulder noticed little flecks of yellow beside his face and he squinted his eyes, trying to focus. Feathers. Little yellow and orange feathers.

He winced as Scully tightly wrapped the gash in his arm.

“Hey,” he said, and she looked up from what she was doing, raising her eyes to him. “Do you have any evidence bags on you?”

“Why?” She asked.

He nodded his head toward the feathers nearby.

“I got evidence.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

ONE WEEK LATER

His stitches were starting to itch and it was driving him slowly mad. His other nicks and scratches were almost completely healed and he had only two of the giant antibiotic horse pills that Scully insist he take left before he was done with the course. 

Scully had gone into the home office to answer a call, leaving him sitting at the breakfast table. He broke off a piece of the bagel he was eating and tossed it to Daggoo. Scully insisted that they not feed the dog from the table, but the little bugger had probably saved his life, so Mulder figured he’d earned it. Anyway, what Scully didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.

“I saw that,” she said from the doorway of the office, lowering the phone from her ear and ending her call.

“Everything all right?” Mulder asked.

“That was Lindsey,” she said, and Mulder perked up.

“And?”

“And the initial tests are inconclusive,” she said, and he felt himself deflate a bit, “but there may be enough source material in the calamus of the feathers for an amplifiable DNA analysis.”

“Well, that’s something,” he said, cautiously optimistic.

“In any event, the Paleontology department is finally taking her seriously.”

“They’d better name it after me.”

“Pterosauria Muldotia?” 

“Has a certain ring to it.”

Scully reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. 

“Cranial scratches are almost gone,” she said, “how’s your arm feel?”

“Itchy,” he said. 

“Good. Means it’s healing." 

“Did I hear Peter Keaton stop by here this morning?” he asked her, surreptitiously dropping another bit of bagel to the floor for the dog. 

“You did. He went out by the river again this morning. Didn’t find anything but a pair of nesting eagles who weren’t too pleased to have him poking around. He followed the river as far as he could, didn’t find anything washed up on the banks.”

Mulder supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Hard, irrefutable proof had never come to him easily.

He reached both arms around Scully and pulled her to stand in between his legs. He placed a gentle kiss on her stomach and tipped his head back to look at her.

She ran her hands through his hair again and smiled down at him.

“Lindsey also may have mentioned that as far as they know, an egg like the one we had wouldn’t have been laid unless it had been fertilized.”

“Yeah?” Mulder said, her usage of the word “fertilized” doing mildly inappropriate things to him.

“Yeah. So even if you did kill one creature… it takes two to tango.”

Mulder felt his spirits rise, amongst other things.

“And would you care to tango, Dr. Scully?” he said, easing his hands lower. 

“I could be talked into it,” she said with a sly smile.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Peter Keaton glanced up once more as one of the eagles glared down at him from their nest, perched high in a towering white pine. He gave it a small salute and walked down the riverbank, giving the nesting birds their space.

The eagle watched him go and canted an eye to look at her mate, who had been watching the interloper from the branch of a beech tree further up the river. Satisfied their nest was in no danger, he dove off the tree and went off to hunt, leaving her to tend the eggs.

She moved them each in turn, gently shifting them with her beak, and then dove off to hunt herself, leaving the eggs for a short time, each the color of a baseball that had seen a few games. They gleamed dully in the sun, all but one; a different shape than the others, and the color of old brick.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to our fantastic beta readers for the help and encouragement! This project has been a blast.
> 
> Artwork is by admiralty. You can purchase all kinds of items with the artwork [here](https://www.redbubble.com/people/x-filesseason12/portfolio?ref=carousel_portfolio&asc=u) (all proceeds are being donated to Planned Parenthood.)
> 
> Thanks for reading Episode Two! We'll be back Friday, October 4, at 9:00 EST with Episode Three. Follow us @Season12XF on Twitter for updates and info!
> 
> Feedback is ALWAYS welcomed and appreciated!


End file.
